What The Hell America!

Severance‘s Season 2 finale asks a powerful question: If there was another version of you — and that version could help save someone you love by dying — would you ask them to do it?

And would that other version of you actually do it?

These are the wonderfully absurd tensions at the heart of the show’s season finale, dubbed “Cold Harbor.” It’s the culmination of a bold progression of episodes that deftly built out the program’s depressing, visually arresting world and the hapless characters caught within it – in the process, crafting Apple TV+’s most-watched series globally. The streamer has already announced it’s picked up a third season.

The premise, for those still catching up, centers on workers for a mysterious, cult-like company called Lumon Industries who have had a medical procedure that severs their work memories from any recollection of what happens outside the office.

But instead of providing the perfect work-life balance, those affected are split into two separate consciousnesses — “innies” and “outies.” The world of the innies is mostly confined to a windowless office at Lumon, with days that start at 9 a.m. and end at 5 p.m.

The show’s second season leaned into the notion of innies as an oppressed class, exploring their fight for freedom while pursuing a central mystery. Adam Scott’s Mark Scout, who turned to a job on Lumon’s “severed floor” after his wife, Gemma, died in a car accident, learned she is actually alive and held somewhere inside the company.

To find her, Mark had brain surgery, trying to re-integrate his two personalities. When that failed, he found another way, in the second season finale, to initiate a bizarre debate between his inner and outer selves aimed at rescuing his wife – revealing that “innie” Mark doesn’t really trust his outside personality to be honest or to value his existence.

I’m always fascinated by new ways storytellers find to talk about the plight of subjugated people. And the fight for all the “innie” personalities at Lumon to somehow free themselves from the company’s control – while also hoping for a solution that keeps them from getting erased if their “outie” is fired by the company – speaks to the terrible extremes many people oppressed in real life must negotiate.

The innies of Severance are a distinctly oppressed class – mostly average folks subjugated by a company whose bizarre rituals were partly inspired by real-life organizations like the Church of Scientology. But these innies are also betrayed by their own outside counterparts, who prioritize their outside concerns and don’t seem to grasp how Lumon’s procedure may have created a new form of life.

And if you are, like the innies, literally defined by work, what does freedom even look like?

As fuel for this trippy tale, director-executive producer Ben Stiller and his crew have developed a creatively distinct and meticulously crafted style for the show – from visuals centered on bleak blues, dark hues and blinding white tones, to an expertly curated soundtrack featuring surprising songs like “Burnin’ Coal” by Les McCann and a version of “Windmills of Your Mind” by Mel Torme. (Severance is the first TV show in a long time that has inspired me to keep a smartphone with the song-identifying app Shazam handy.)

Adding to all this excellence is spot-on casting and wonderfully inspired guest appearances. Scott is doing the best work of his career playing an exasperated, charming everyman in Mark; Britt Lower nimbly navigates the steely rebellion of innie Helly R. and the cold calculation of her outie, company bigwig Helena Eagan. Zach Cherry has leavened his side splitting comedic chops with a poignant take on Dylan G., perhaps the only character who may be more successful inside Lumon than outside.

And the scene-stealing performances by Tramell Tillman as tightly-wound company man Seth Milchick remind me of the moment I tuned into a show called Fear the Walking Dead and was riveted by an actor I’d never seen before: Colman Domingo.

This season, we’ve been treated to delightful guest appearances from Sandra Bernhard, Jane Alexander, John Noble, Alia Shawkat, Game of Thrones alum Gwendoline Christie and consummate character actor Bob Balaban. I feel sorry for anybody else trying to get noticed in the Emmys’ supporting and guest acting categories this year.

(I know: I’m leaving out John Turturro as tortured romantic innie Irving B., Patricia Arquette as icy villain-turned-ally Harmony Cobel, Robby Benson as weird corporate physician Dr. Mauer, Christopher Walken as Irving’s love interest Burt G., Dichen Lachman as Mark’s missing wife Gemma and many, many more awesome performers).

Not since the early seasons of Lost has a TV show so deftly balanced quirky storytelling touches added for style and crucial details needed to understand the unfolding plot.

Still, with all its quality, Severance doesn’t grapple much with one question: Are these severed staffers truly two different beings in one? Or is each one just a troubled person, deluded by merciless indoctrination and an invasive brain implant into believing they have a divided existence?

Given how open-ended this week’s episode concludes, I’m hopeful this is an idea they’ll explore in their next, truly amazing season. Because Severance has so far offered a thrilling, smartly-crafted meditation on life, grief, oppression, privilege, class and corporate life with few equals in today’s TV landscape.

And I can’t wait to see where they’ll take us next.